Kyoto's historic townhouses, machiyas, are increasingly being renovated and turned into everything from hotels to perfume stores. Here, we collect five of the best examples. More about Five carefully renovated machiya houses in Kyoto
Japanese studio Keiji Ashizawa Design has created the Toune holiday home in a 120-year-old machiya, preserving its original layout and the "sense of time embedded within the building" while giving it a contemporary update. More about Keiji Ashizawa creates holiday home within historic machiya
Local studio Schemata Architects drew on historic townhouses when creating this office along Japan's Tōkaidō road, which features a corrugated metal facade with window shutters that open "as if breathing". More about Schemata Architects reimagines machiya house with metal awnings for Uchida Shōten HQ
Japanese design firm Studio Aluc "deliberately retained traces of past craftsmanship" to transform a historic machiya residence into a short-stay hotel in Kyoto. More about Studio Aluc turns 100-year old Kyoto townhouse into hotel
Interiors firm UNC Studio has transformed a traditional wooden house in Kyoto into a Japanese-Mexican fusion cafe and eatery with a bold, all-red interior. More about Challe cafe in Kyoto fuses Mexican and Japanese design
Tokyo studio Schemata Architects has combined Japanese and Western designs inside a traditional wooden townhouse in Kyoto to create a store for perfumery brand Le Labo. More about Schemata Architects transforms 145-year-old townhouse into Le Labo flagship
Japanese design studios Td-Atelier and Endo Shorijo Design have renovated a century-old machiya townhouse in Kyoto with minimal interiors that intend to honour the home's existing architecture. More about Td-Atelier and Endo Shorijo Design transform interior of traditional machiya house in Kyoto
Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a new boutique for fashion house Issey Miyake inside one of Kyoto's historic machiya houses. More about Naoto Fukasawa inserts Issey Miyake store into 132-year-old Kyoto townhouse
This 120-year-old Kyoto townhouse was once used as a seed plantation, but has been carefully restored to create an events venue that celebrates Japanese interior design traditions. More about Events space opens inside revamped century-old machiya house in Kyoto
Graduate shows 2015: traditional machiya houses in the Japanese city of Kyoto are under threat from modern development, so Royal College of Art graduate Adam Roberts proposes stacking them up to make them more cost and space efficient (+ slideshow). More about Adam Roberts proposes stacking traditional Kyoto dwellings to create "machiya towers"
Architecture studio NAAD has gutted a 100-year-old house in Kyoto and re-skinned the interior in plywood to create a temporary dwelling that is designed to look incomplete (+ slideshow). More about NAAD lines a century-old Japanese house with exposed plywood
Rather than erasing all trace of this Kyoto townhouse's previous owners, Japanese architects Q-Architecture Laboratory preserved the earlier haphazard extensions as a timeline of the building's history. More about Timeline Machiya by Q-Architecture Laboratory